Caltrain's Bogus Ridership Numbers

On May 15, 2025, SFGate published an article on Caltrain ridership: Bay Area train is red-hot with riders, but trouble lies ahead which claims that Caltrain ridership is way up:

According to new numbers provided to SFGATE, in April 2025, ridership jumped 60% compared with the same month a year prior. That follows a similar spike in ridership in October, when Caltrain reported its weekday ridership grew 54% compared with the same month in 2023.

But the numbers in the article do not support the headline. More from the story:

During April 2019, average daily ridership was nearly 1.6 million people. ... the April 2025 ridership reached 925,000 people.

Commuters riding the train frequently tend to purchase the monthly pass, and Caltrain announced that it had changed how those riders are tallied starting this year. Instead of estimating that each pass represented 26 trips per month, Caltrain is now counting 37 trips. [emphasis mine] The agency said it made the change based on feedback from a 2024 rider survey.

So Caltrain has now boosted the ride count of the 59% of all riders who have Go or monthly passes by 42%! This is a fraudulent tactic to obscure the severity of the ridership decline. Without that adjustment comparable April 2025 ridership would be 741,000 - less than half of the 2019 level. And this ridership falloff comes after spending $2,440,000,000 to electrify the system. In my opinion, the adjustment is unreasonable. Work-from-home has increased from 2019 to 2025. An adjustment  is in order, but in the other direction.

Caltrain officials said at the rate it’s going, the annual deficit would grow to at least $60 million a year starting in 2027.

This "deficit" number isn't the total subsidy needed by Caltrain - it's the amount needed in addition to current subsidies of around $200 million per year. In 2024, Caltrain earned $50 million from fares, parking, and advertising sales. The system cost $194 million to operate plus $58 million in depreciation - $252 million in operating expenses - for a loss of $200 million (made up through subsidies). Subsidies are currently 4X ticket revenues and still aren't enough. 

But that's not the whole story. Caltrain doesn't pay real estate tax, personal property tax, or fuel tax - unlike Uber or Lyft or Waymo. And the traffic disruptions caused by the system cost automobile and truck drivers time and fuel.

The system is in place and working. We might as well ride it to take advantage of the sunk costs and low marginal cost. But it's a drain on the local economy to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Urban commuter rail is an 18th century technology that benefits politicians (who sell control station location, movement of people, and patronage jobs). We need a 21st century transportation system, with cars, jitneys, and buses that are flexible and redundant. We need transportation systems that take people from where they are to where they want to go, when they want to travel. That's not Caltrain.

Heat pump water heater math

My conventional natural gas water heater is 24 years old, and with increasing regulation on the horizon I have been looking into a replacement. My local utility is offering substantial subsidies to convert to a heat pump water heater (HPWH), so I delved into the numbers.

I have two natural gas powered appliances - my home furnace (forced hot air) and water heater (40 gallon tank). So my summertime natural gas usage is exclusively for hot water heating. Over the past four years my summer usage has averaged 5 therms per month. I pay $1.60 per therm of natural gas. That's the sum of Commodity, Distribution, Transport, CO₂ offset, and Cap & Trade. I'm not including the fixed connection charge. Thus a rough estimate of my cost to heat water with natural gas - including offset cost to make my gas usage CO₂-neutral - is $8/month.

My next step is to estimate how much it will cost me to run a HPWH.

The principal argument for modern heat pump water heaters is that they need less energy to produce hot water because they "pump" heat rather than generating it. Specifically, the claim is that a quality HPWH will have a "COP" (coefficient of performance) of 3.

1 therm of energy is approximately equal to 29.3kWh of electricity, so my current gas water heating (which consumes 5 therms of gas) is the energy equivalent, roughly, of 5 * 29.3 ≈ 150 kWh/month. A COP of 3 means that instead of requiring 150 kWh of energy per month, the HPWH will need only 150/3 = 50 kWh/month. My ex ante electrical use roughly fills electrical rate "tier 1" so my marginal electricity rate is 23¢ per kWh. 50 kWh/month means 50 * 0.23 = $11.50/month expected cost for hot water from a HPWH. (Using an average electricity rate of 21.5¢/kWh means $10.75/month). I conclude that a HPWH will cause an inconsequential increase on my monthly cost to heat water.

I don't think I'll need electrical work done - the HPWH consumes 440W on average and so can probably share the 120V circuit that serves my furnace. But the purchase price is far greater than a gas heater - $2000 vs $500-$700 - so there is no chance I will break even over its lifetime, even at a zero discount rate.

I live in a high density suburb and have underground utilities, so my electrical service is generally reliable. Outages are unlikely to affect hot water availability. Again, natural gas gets an inconsequential advantage for reliability.

Two "environmental" arguments are made in favor of HPWH. One is a "climate" claim which puts a negative value on CO₂ emission. But my utility imposes mandatory CO₂ offset and cap & trade fees, so my natural gas CO₂ emissions are fully offset. Furthermore, the extra CO₂ emissions involved in manufacturing the HPWH (which weighs 80 lbs more than the gas heater and includes a compressor and heat exchanger will never be offset by the emissions reductions from operation - if indeed there is any reduction. If I was genuinely concerned about minimizing CO₂ emissions, a far more effective use of my funds would be to purchase CO₂ offsets.

The second environmental argument is air pollution from burning natural gas. That argument is not persuasive either. Most of my hot water usage is in the evening when my electricity is produced by natural gas turbines. A gas turbine electrical generation facility may run cleaner than my hot water heater, but generation and transmission losses probably make the net difference minuscule.

The question I'm left with is - why is the City subsidizing this conversion?